A problem in making "Hybrid Integrated Circuits" or HICs relates to cost-effectively combining two components from distinct groups, namely, film elements and semiconductor circuits. When the two components are combined to form a single package, each carries with it the cost of its entire production process. In making the components, a few components in each group tend to be defective. To minimize the cost of the assembled packages, it becomes desirable to ensure that good components of the one group are not combined with defective ones of the other group, such that only functional components are combined with each other. Testing of electrical components and sorting out those which are defective proceeds most economically on an automated basis. Automated testing and sorting methods for semiconductor chips are available and have been applied for some time. However, even though partly automated testing of such articles as film circuits carried by ceramic substrates is also available, heretofore, defective ones of such articles have generally been identified and sorted out by an operator.
In the manufacture of an article, such as a thin film circuit carried by a ceramic substrate, circuit pattern forming steps are typically followed by routine adjustment and testing operations before components such as the semiconductor chips are mounted to the article. Such adjustment and testing are typically executed by sophisticated equipment having capabilities of automatically adjusting or of testing a group of such articles arranged in an array on a single ceramic substrate. The results of tests as to whether the articles meet specifications are shown on indicator arrays. Indicators in such arrays correspond in their positions to the positions of the array of articles on the substrate.
A typical duty of an operator includes reading off positions of lighted indicators in such indicator arrays and marking corresponding circuit substrates in the array on the single ceramic substrate as being defective. The marked substrates are then omitted from a bonding operation during which the chips are combined with the articles. Occasional errors occur when an operator inadvertently marks an acceptable article as being defective instead of marking the article which the indicator array shows as being defective. Such an error not only decreases the yield of the manufacturing process but also permits a defective article to remain in the process sequence. It is therefore desirable to automate marking of any defective articles.
But even if the articles are automatically marked as being defective, operators still have to eliminate such marked articles from further processing steps. A continued inclusion of such marked articles in further processing steps is time consuming and unnecessarily costly. It is therefore desirable to automatically identify such marked articles to permit them to be automatically eliminated from the processing sequence.